The Homestretch

Thursday is our final walk through so everything is moving really quickly now!  Last weekend Jesse was building one more shelf in the basement and hanging some blinds in the bedrooms. 

Here are some updated pictures. 

 

Vicki and I had an adventure in Appleton trying to pick out mirrors for the bathrooms.  We went to so many different stores and then ended up back at the first store. :)  I really like both of the mirror selections, but I think they look better in person.

 

Last Friday the appliances were delivered.  Oooh...ahhh! 

 

The dishwasher got hooked up today. 

 

Here is the stove.  Looks great from a distance. 

 

But then you look at it up close.  Hmmm....looks like it got dropped!  This cracks me up.  There are dents on all four corners.  Why on earth would they even install this?  It should be replaced on Friday. 

 

Today some equipment from the landscaping company showed up.  They are hoping to get at least the steps done tomorrow.  They won't start the rest of the landscaping until mid-August.

 

Pantry shelves are up!

 

My kitchen aid mixer lift is installed :) 

 

And we have some carpet!

 

The house is just beautiful.  I told Jesse the only problem is that it is too pretty for us to move in!

If You Don't Have Time To Do It Right Then You Must Have Time To Do It Again

We are all human and we all make mistakes.  I consider it a strength of character to admit to those mistakes and do what you can to fix it.  Yesterday we had two subcontractors come back to re-do work.

The Driveway
The first being our driveway that has/had many issues.  Interesting that this is the "best mason in the area".  Maybe I should look into that line of work.

The pits

The roller coaster

Oops...missed that part

They ripped up the bottom 1/3 of our driveway yesterday and repoured to (hopefully) take care of the pitting problem we were having down there.   As for the bumps...they say that is normal in a driveway.  I don't remember having bumps like that in a driveway, but I haven't looked that closely either!

The Countertop
The counter top subcontractor had to come back as well.  Last week they installed all counter tops.  We picked remnants everywhere except the kitchen since you can save quite a bit of money.  We picked our remnant slabs a few weeks ago.  Jesse went to the house to check them out and he was really surprised by what we had picked for our master bathroom.  It had little red dots all over it...how could we miss that when picking slabs?! (Kind of hard to tell in this picture, but the red really didn't go with our bathroom colors at all!)

I was just chalking it up to a bad decision on our part, but Jesse went to the stone yard and lo and behold...the slab we picked was still there with the sticky note with our name on it.  :)
That was replaced yesterday as well.

  

Despite having some work to re-do Erbes has still been making progress.   The outside is close to finished, they just have to paint the trim white outside.  

They put up part of the railing going upstairs.  It will feel much safer when we bring the kids now!  This picture also shows my favorite purchase for the house...the great room fan.  Who knew a fan could be so exciting?

And Jesse built some awesome shelves over the weekend so we have room to store our stuff! 

Moving day is 9 days away!  Hard to believe they will get everything done in that short time, but Erbes hasn't disappointed me yet.

T-minus 15 days

Little over two weeks until the builder says they're all done and we can move in.  We're very excited!  Things are going to be coming together very quickly now. But the frenzy itself leads to stress.  Current stresses are:

• Getting blinds measured, ordered and installed hopefully before we move in
• The landscaper was supposed to be finished with our paver patio and sprinklers and have grass planted by the time we move in.  Now he says they won't start until mid-August!  Which means no steps from our patio door which might be a problem.
• What to do with the mantle, now that the painter gave his professional recommendation against our plan of just painting it a specific near-black color.
• Getting adequate garage/basement shelving built and installed so we have places to put all of our junk.  Jesse has another big project ahead.
• All the logistics of moving... childcare, etc.
• Making sure all the little dings and scratches of construction get fixed up to give us the "perfect" house we're hoping for.  Most notably....

The driveway.  There are a number of apparent "splashes" of pittted holes we noticed.  From what we've read, this may be error on the part of the installer.  It sounds like we'll be able to have these whole sections pulled out and re-poured (at no cost to us), but that has yet to be finalized.  Yikes!

On a brighter note, keeping our spirits up, countertops were installed today!  Something we were very much looking forward to.  We're very happy with how they turned out.  The kitchen below is Hanstone quartz, in Aspen and Tiffany Grey.

Moving right along

 Things have definitely slowed down now that we are to the finishing part.  They've been working on the siding and stone.  Here is a picture of the front of the house.

 

This is the fireplace stone.  When we picked stone for the exterior and fireplace Jesse and I were maxed out on decisions. Neither of us could decide so we picked one that we hoped we wouldn't hate. :)  Good news...we don't hate it!

  

I've decided there are two things I would not want to do if I were a contractor.  The first one is drywall/mud/taping.  The second would be installing cabinets.  Seems like a tedious job.  But they look really nice!

There was a little oopsie that the electrician had to come fix.  The light switch was where the refrigerator/cabinet was supposed to go.  They came back and fixed it right up.  Now about that hole in the wall...

 Yesterday they started installing the cabinets for our built in desk area.  I think it will look great!

Speakers

Cutting big holes in newly finished drywall is nerve-wracking, but it is now completed without any significant mishaps.

Here's my "OMG WHAT HAVE I DONE" pic:

...and then, "Oh, that turned out well"

Pic of the ceiling speakers in the kitchen:

Picture time!

Time for some pictures!  

Here is a snapshot of all of the choices we made.  Nora was a big helper...she has an eye for design. ;)

 

 Here is our kitchen flooring all installed! 

Kids bathroom/basement bathroom flooring complete

 Master bathroom flooring

Some doors are up

And even some trim!  (I think all of this still needs to be painted...they must paint while it is up?)

This is what we came up with for the paver patio.  The lighter color will be the main part and the dark gray will be the perimeter.  

 

Aaaaand...here is the siding!  

  

And a driveway...with some soccer cleat imprints courtesy of Nora...

It is coming along nicely! Next week the cabinets will be in. And we have a "ready for move in" date of August 7th.  Anyone want to get a good lifting workout in?! ;)

Can you decide on that...by tomorrow...

There seems to be a trend of asking for decisions rather quickly.  Which is funny because a couple times when I've felt all caught up on decisions I have asked..."What should we be working on next?" And they say "Nothing for a while now".  But then a week later they call and say "Did you decide on stone for the outside?" or "Did you get your light fixtures yet?"  Cuz were gonna need that...tomorrow.  :)  But honestly that is OK because I think we make our best decisions under pressure.
Here is what we/they have been working on the past two weeks:
Drywall/Painting
The drywall taping/mudding is complete and all walls are primed and painted!  We choose Benjamin Moore Pashmina for the walls. I was concerned about it being too dark, but I was WRONG.  I absolutely love it on the walls.
Electrical
After the painting was finished the electricians came in.  One guy was great...one guy was clearly learning the trade.  I think Jesse was about to step in and help him figure out how to wire that three-way switch. ;)  We got a call last Thursday morning from the electrician asking if we picked out any of our lighting.  So we took the day off of work and off to Menards and Lowes we went. We got everything except our island lighting, entry lighting and great room fan purchased.
Countertops
We also worked on picking out countertops.  We had to go through the remnants and pick ones that fit with our color schemes.  The first day we went was Wednesday. Which happened to be rainy and muggy and we were being attacked by mosquitoes.  I wanted to make decisions just so we could get out of there!  We went back on Thursday so we could make better choices and I'm glad we did because Jesse found an awesome remnant for our master bath hiding behind 3 other ones.
Landscaping
We signed our landscaping contract last week.  We are hoping to have our lawn seeded by the time we move in.  We will be putting in sprinklers on a well, hydroseeding, planting a few trees and putting stone around the outside perimeter.  We are having them do a pavers patio with a built in firepit, too.  I think we will really love our outside space!
Appliances
We also bought all of our appliances on Friday of last week.  We ended up going with stainless steel even though I'm concerned about fingerprints.  I'm really excited about having a dishwasher with a door that doesn't fall down all the time.  And a refrigerator with an ice maker! 
Flooring
Today they start on the hard floors in the house so the cabinets will be ready to be installed soon.  They are also working on soffits and siding this week.  Oh...and our garage doors were put up last week. 
Geeky Stuff
Jesse has been working on his geeky stuff.  Computer wires and speaker wires.  I won't go into the details of all of that. But he is doing a great job and I know we will love the speakers. :)
Whew!  So a lot has happened in the past two weeks.  It has been a whirlwind.  But I think Jesse and I are both loving the process.
I will be sure to post some pictures soon. 

Two months to go

The drywall is all up and taped and mudded. They are supposed to texture tomorrow and maybe start painting on Friday!  The drywall company sure works their employees hard.  I went by the house to pick up a sample of the trim and siding at 7:00 PM on a Friday and there was one lonely guy working.  Jesse stopped by the house on Sunday around 2:00 PM.  Same guy...still working...on stilts so he could drywall the ceiling.  Not really sure how I feel about that.  My house isn't THAT important. :(
In other news, we had to show our rental home today.  The landlord is trying to sell it.  I'm secretly hoping it doesn't work out because I'm pretty sure we will need to extend our lease by a couple weeks. 
Last week we picked out all of our flooring with the help of this awesome designer, Gail, at Designers 2. 
The wood is going in the kitchen/dining area as well as our basement bedroom/workout room.  The lighter tile is going in two of the bathrooms.  The darker tile is going in the master bath.  The carpet we chose is the second from the left.  The two little blocks are our cabinet colors.  White for kitchen.  Dark for island, bathroom, railing, mantle and desk.

 

We also have to pick outside stone by the end of the week.  This is what we are thinking:

 

 
We also decided on a paint color and "upgraded" our look to have white ceilings.  Of course with the upgraded looked comes an upgraded price tag. ;)

 

Here is the paint color we choose.  Benjamin Moore Pashmina:

This week we need to focus on what we are doing with the patio in the backyard and picking out stone for the fireplace.

Slow the ef down.

Between house building, kids activities, birthdays, end of school and work our life has been absolutely nuts lately!  Every night of the week we are booked with something. I'm ready for life to slow down once summer starts. 
Jesse did all of the wiring last weekend.  The plumbers, HVAC and electricians have all finished their in-wall jobs.  Which means we are ready for dry wall!  Last Friday I stopped by the house and they had loaded all of the dry wall in the house so they are ready to go this week.  They are scheduled to be finished with drywall in 2 weeks.  Now that we are at this stage it seems the builders are looking to us for many decisions.  This week we will need to decide on garage doors, interior doors, interior trim, flooring and paint colors.  Whew!
You would think picking a garage door would be easy.  Here is what you need to pick on the garage door along.  First of all there are 7 different "collections" from Clopay.  Each of those collections has varying levels of construction which affects the energy efficiency.  Then there is short panel or long panel.  About 20 different window options.  Type of hardware on the door.  

Here is what we ended up with (looks nothing like our house, but the garage door is what we picked)

Then onto the interior doors.  Same kind of thing.  7 different "series".  In those series 14 different "panels".  2, 3, 4, 5, 6 panels?  Arched or square?

Here is our door...we went with the 2 panel square:

We decided to meet with an interior designer regarding flooring choices and that will be on Thursday.  Our decision will need to be by Friday to make sure they are ready for install on June 23rd (the hard floors need to go under the cabinets).    She will also help us pick out paint colors which also need to be decided by Friday.  More pictures to come with flooring choice and some dry walled rooms!

Wiring Weekend

Just wrapped up a 3+ day effort pulling all the network, tv, and speaker cables I wanted.  It was quite a lot of work, but I am so satisfied.  I am so glad I got this opportunity, and took it, and thankful to those who helped and/or helped with the kids so I could work.  This home will truly be mine now!  Every cable is labeled.  I've got a double-network drop in a closet location that's great for wifi access point.  I've got two coax drops in the attic for any dish or antenna we may get. All the connectivity I (hopefully) will ever need by the TV's and desk.

In the end, we've got:

• 18 runs of RG6 coax totaling 976 feet
• 25 runs of CAT6 totaling 1320 feet
• 5 zones of in-ceiling speakers and two 5.1 in-wall surround sound setups totaling 596 feet of speaker wire.

Next up, clean up this area with a CAT6 patch panel, a coax distribution block, some nice shelving for the various devices that'll go here (cable modem, router, switch, SONOS speaker distribution, NAS):

Outlet area in great room under TV.  From left to right we've got 5.1 surround sound speakers, 4x network, 3x coax, a hole with conduit up to the hung TV to pull any cables we need behind the wall.

Picture of in-ceiling speaker location in master bedroom.  I rigged up some acoustic insulation above them to try to keep the noise from being loud upstairs.